Chinese font showing as squares or just in English

[Mitchell39]

I use InDesign CC2018 on a UK MacBook Pro and want to use a Chinese font to convert English text in the document I am working on.

The font is called 'SourceHansCN-Regular'

When I highlight the text and chose this font, it stays in English or sometimes just squares.

Does anyone know what I can do, to use these fonts, or if there is a work around?

On earlier Macs I have had, when I use Chinese fonts it mucks up the keyboard etc

Thanks

[davidblatner · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, you cannot just change the font and have it appear in Chinese. You would need to retype it, or paste it, or Place it, from a document with Chinese text. If you want to type in Chinese, you need to turn on the Chinese input method in the Keyboard System Preferences, as described here:

https://creativepro.com/question-character-finding-what-you-need-your-fonts-part-2-0/

[ComputerDancerDude]

I have a Word document with people's English names AND Chinese names.  I want to copy the block of text and paste it into a block in InDesign (i'm drawing out a family tree).  The Chinese  characters are showing up as "blocks".  Is there something I need to switch on to see the Chinese characters properly?

[BobLevine]

Place it, don't paste it.

If you need separate stories, place it into a new InDesign file and copy paste from there.

[Test Screen Name]

Also you may need to choose a Chinese font for the placed Chinese text. Best to set up a character style for this. 

[ComputerDancerDude]

Thanks. That was it. That is, copy and paste the text from your Word document and paste it into your InDesign document. Select the alleged Chinese text and set it to some Chinese font.